The bull "Laudabiliter," by which the English Pope Nicholas Breakspeare (Adrian IV.) gives Ireland to Henry II., is a formal bargain; the king buys, the Pope sells; the price is minutely discussed beforehand, and set down in the agreement.[148] But the most remarkable view suggested to them by this practical turn of their mind consisted in the value they chose to set, even at that distant time, on "public opinion," if we may use the expression, and on literature as a means of action. This was a stroke of genius; William endeavoured, and his successors imitated him, to do for the past what he was doing for the present: to unify. For this, the new dynasty wanted the assistance of poets, and it called upon them. William had persistently given himself out to be not only the successor, but the rightful heir of Edward the Confessor, and of the native kings. During several centuries the poets who wrote in the French tongue, the Latin chroniclers, the English rhymers, as though obedient to a word of command, blended all the origins together in their books; French, Danes, Saxons, Britons, Trojans even, according to them, formed one sole race; all these men had found in England a common country, and their united glories were the general heritage of posterity. With a persistency which lasted from century to century, they displaced the national point of view, and ended by establishing, with every one's assent, the theory that the constitution and unity of a nation are a question not of blood but of place; consanguinity matters little; the important point is to be compatriots. All the inhabitants of the same country are one people: the Saxons of England and the French of England are nothing but Englishmen. All the heroes who shone in the British Isle are now indiscriminately sung by the poets, who celebrate Brutus, Arthur, Hengist, Horsa, Cnut, Edward, and William in impartial strains. They venerate in the same manner all saints of whatever blood who have won heaven by the practice of virtue on English ground. Here again the king, continuing the wise policy of his ancestors, sets the example. On Easter Day, 1158, Henry II. and his wife Alienor of Aquitaine enter the cathedral of Worcester, wearing their crowns, and present themselves before the tomb of the holy protector of the town. They remove their crowns, place them on his tomb, and swear never to wear them again. The saint was not a French one, but Wulfstan, the last Anglo-Saxon bishop, one who held the see at the time of the Conquest.[149]